Religion Dispatches
…such nonsense. But in studies like this one, Phrenology’s back again in a new form, implying this time that the size of the brain is any indicator of human intelligence. We’ve all been told countless times that the human brain is a highly redundant organ, and that each of us uses only a fraction of it in normal circumstances. Given that established scientific truism, it would be passing strange if brain size bore any relation to intelligence. An…
Read More…ion. Perhaps in the wake of the tragedy in Ferguson there will be a renewed vigor from progressive churches that will help repair old coalitions, build new ones, and tell a new story about who gets to speak “for religious people.”…
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….” One of the things we can do is call them out on that. You propose seven new deadly sins and seven new amazing graces—what are they? The core of my book is to move from this crime-based model of sin to a Christ-centered model of sin, and it’s not some kind of newfangled thing. As someone who teaches early church history, I’m trying to draw on this alternative strand of thinking about salvation and grace and God’s love and Christ infusing divinit…
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…teady stream of beliefs that arise around the world. Since the creation of new criteria for Marian apparitions in 1978, hundreds of sightings have been studied, and at least 12 were formally approved as of 2008—according to most numbers (although even a simple count of “official” sites is hard to obtain), Our Lady of Good Help is the 13th. Pope Benedict XVI recently called for more moderation in approving such sites, but any new regulations did no…
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…sion was later ruled moot because HHS had changed its policy and did not renew the USCCB’s contract (provoking the Republican accusations of anti-Catholic bias), the ACLU maintains the legal reasoning still applies. If it does, the ACLU argues, the bishops’ claims that the new Prison Rape Elimination Act regulations violate RFRA would not prevail, since RFRA cannot trump the Constitution. “It’s a stretch to argue, as they do, that they are entitle…
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…onality, we are fated to despair. We know full well the makings of genuine newness are not included among these present pieces. And short of genuine newness life becomes a dissatisfied coping, a grudging trust, and a managing that dares never ask too much. (The Prophetic Imagination, p. 63) This is what Obama seems to have been shooting for—and failed to achieve. Where his rhetoric soared on the campaign trail, in the State of the Union it seemed…
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…rch attendance correlates not with lower, but with higher Trump support. A new report by PRRI now confirms the trend with respect to the broader phenomenon of Christian nationalism, the preferred ideological vehicle for evangelicals’ pervasive authoritarian attitudes. The report, “A Christian Nation? Understanding the Threat of Christian Nationalism to American Democracy and Culture,” divides Americans into Christian nationalism adherents, sympath…
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…personal lives. Against this backdrop, to what degree do you feel that the new formations of folks exiting traditional religion but still feeling some kind of “God-shaped space” will create a new spiritual culture in which resistance to exploitation and degradation is a central theme? I realize it can be argued that strong and growing resistance movements, notably Black Lives Matter, already constitute the new spiritual formations needed by the ex…
Read More…e should remember to (re)turn to the Arts as we continue to try to imagine new and creative ways out of the current impasse, new ways to engage the Sciences and the Humanities in common enterprises—whether they be political, ethical, or aesthetic. I eagerly anticipate Philip Clayton’s subsequent columns on specific case studies of the current state of the Religion-and-Science divide, and would welcome further the Aesthetic realm in these debates….
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This morning, PRRI released a new study on religious change in the US with implications for understanding support for White Christian nationalism and its avatar, Donald Trump. Those implications fall into two broad categories: religious change and the faith identity of Trump’s followers. To set the scene for the first category, let’s list some general points of interest: Mainline Protestants outnumber evangelicals by a very slim margin Only nine…
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